Creative musings in bright colors

Posts tagged ‘christmas’

Super simple and super fast. This is one of the quasi-Christmas themed manicures I actually did over the holiday break. I more or less only took reds and greens with me, with a few stamping plates. I decided to do a tone-on-tone manicure using the wonderful opacity of every A England polish, and one of my favorite (if underused) dark green holos, Ski Lodge.

This whole manicure took less than an hour, and it was mostly waiting for Ski Lodge to dry before I could stamp. The design ended up being somewhat subtle, but since the nails were a vibrant shade of forest green, they were themselves far from subtle!

To be fair, when I painted these (well, stamped them) it was a few weeks out from Christmas. I always thought this particular stamp looked rather like christmas trees if you only used half of it! Otherwise it looks like stylized stalactites and stalagmites.

Of course, any manicure using an awesome mutlichrome and a rose gold stamping polish is going to look pretty good. This was easy to make pretty!

Short, sweet, and straightforward! If it helps, the reason this post is so short is that I am taking Step 3 of the medical board exam tomorrow. And Friday. Because of course it is a two day test *grumble grumble* but after this Friday I am free again!

You guys, I am terrible! I am sorry it has been a week since my last post…I just didn’t have time to put together any of this since then! I was at my in-laws for Christmas and then my sister (and her adorable puppy) came to visit me, and there wasn’t time for photo editing! I am wearing the same design on my nails that I placed a week ago. A WEEK. And it is chipped and awful. Sorry nails!

Anyway, this design was supposed to be candy canes, and was intended to go up last Wednesday just after Christmas. I failed. But I am going to post it anyway!

The base color here is three thin coats of Aphrodite by Zoya, which is a pretty orange-leaning bright red with glitter, but unfortunately is not QUITE opaque. I will likely end up using this as a jelly rather than a glitter crelly due to the three coat problem! But I love how bright it is. I bought Aphrodite (and like 15 other polishes) during black friday/cyber monday deals.

One day closer to gift-day (aka Christmas) and one more red/green manicure!

I started with red glitter, then double stamped with a white-to-green and green-to-white gradient (I don’t know why) and when that just looked messy I stamped with dark red. Despite the completely unplanned and frequently ugly nature of this manicure as it developed, I actually quite like the end result!

This is my entry for this years nail art canada holiday challenge! I have entered for the past 5 or so years, and last year I won the internal competition! Most years I just pick my very favorite holiday mani that I had done up to that point…but this year I painted something specifically for the challenge. I have to say I am quite pleased! The design itself was based off a press-on nail set by Project Nails.

I started with a blue holographic base (mostly because I wanted to use a one-coat base and the halo hues collection from Color Club are basically magic). I then brush-gradiented using blue and purple scattered holo crellies and splotched on some dark teal jelly. Once that was all top coated and dry, it was design time!

I basically freehanded some rooftops, then a moon, then snow, and finally windows and sled. The hardest part of the whole thing was certainly the reindeer, I still don’t love them but without using acrylic I think this is the best I can do! The only part of this mani that isn’t free-handed is the stars: those are stamps. The top of the moon was made from playing with variations of white and yellow to make a little gradient.

Please go vote for this entry in the challenge, it would be amazing to win! You can find the link hereand sprinkled throughout the rest of this post. I will keep posting the link for the remainder of the contest. Hope you enjoyed, and thank you for voting!!

I feel like this is a very descriptive title. And I feel like this mani would have been boring…if not for the fact that the red base is a thermal! I didn’t bother trying to catch all the color shifting, since this is an old one that you guys have seen before. BUT, I did capture it how it existed 90% of the time: as a gradient!

This was basically just me having fun with thermal polish and a swoopy stamp. Of course, I used gold, because what else does one use with red? As a result it accidentally came out Christmas-y!

I’ve probably seen 15 versions of this mani floating around the internet, but I have no idea who originated the idea! So I won’t be crediting anyone.

This was basically a “lets see how many holiday creatures I can fit onto my nails” idea. So, we have a gingerbread man (with bow tie painted first! I can learn!), a snowman, an elf, santa, and a reindeer (yes, that is what is supposed to be happening on my thumb). All-in-all, I’m pretty happy with how this all came out!

I used enough polishes that I’m not going to list them all here. Back when I painted these, only the light green was new (but you guys have already seen a swatch of it at this point). These were painted in December 2016 because I am a loser who never edits her nail art.

I think of all these nails, my favorite was probably the snowman…but they were all cute! No one figured out the reindeer without being prompted though. Except maybe my husband. I’m pretty sure he can read my mind at this point.

I actually wore these to Thanksgiving, but that is when the Christmas decorations go up! The story here is that my mother-in-law collects nutcrackers. She probably has around 100 total, it is pretty incredible. I wanted to do some nails that she would enjoy!

As such, these were inspired by the adorably painted and carved toys, not the ballet! Usually I would be doing the ballet, but not this year. I should mention that this was a little bit of striping tape and a LOT of freehand, and I am quite proud of his face!

This is only 5 colors, and a lot of different golden studs. You have no idea how many photos of nutcrackers I looked at when trying to decide what to make what color and which body part to paint.

Also, because I am a dork, there are three sizes of studs on here! Caviar beads on my pinky, normal sized studs on my middle finger, and some small ones on my thumb. I finally have enough different sizes to do stuff like this!

This nail art looks rather…bad, and is very old! These are from LAST Christmas, but by the time I got them onto my computer it was January so I didn’t post them. The photos were also taken 4 days after the design was painted, which is why there is so much growth at my nail bed, sorry!

For some reason, when I went for a week to celebrate Christmas with my husband’s family last year, I basically only brought glittery polish. No, I don’t know what I was thinking. So, I had to put together a Christmas mani with nothing but glitter….no stamping plates, and very little else. Honestly, this is actually too much glitter for me. I never thought I’d say that, but sometimes it happens! You can hardly see the design edges for the glitter!

As you probably figured, this begins my Christmas manis…I’ll have another one on Friday and next Monday. Please go vote for me at Nail Polish Canada so I can win some pretties here, and hope you enjoyed!

This mani is…fairly random. I figured it was about time to start posting some actual holiday nail art, so here we are!

I am going to pretend that these are ornaments on a tree. I did mean to make them gold and green for Christmas, so let’s go with it! I just didn’t figure they would end up quite so…gold.

The only colors here are the green-to-blue multichrome, which is Reminisce by ILNP and black which is Black on Black by Sinful Colors. The stamp is from BM plate XL209, because I’ve always enjoyed bubble-looking designs!

I then decided to try out some of the gold studs I was sent from the Born Pretty Store. Now, this particular set also has starfish and seashells…and was supposed to arrive back in June but it came with this batch in November instead! So instead I am using some less summer-y gold bits, but this summer I WILL be using those adorable seashells.

Anyway, I used the smallest circle studs and the empty circle studs here. I must say, I was impressed by how easily the hollow circles stayed on, despite their large size! The gold color did not run off with top coat, which has happened with some other 3D bits I’ve used. Overall, quite nice! If you want to pick up this stud set, head over to the Born Pretty Store, where you can find it for $2.29. Enjoy!

This is by far not the end of my winter and christmas manis…this is just the last one I got done ahead of time to be able to post 😀

These were also the nails I submitted to the Nail Art Canada holiday nail art challenge, but I lost the link somehow so I didn’t get them posted until one day before the contest closed. As a result, I didn’t win, but I did somehow make top 5 for the people-who-submitted-to-vote (let’s see how that one goes!), but thanks to all of you who voted anyway!

I put these together using stamping decals for the holly and simple stamps with dots added for the branches nails. Overall quite easy!

Gingerbread men are totally more Christmas-themed than penguins! Unfortunately I did the spacing a bit strangely (note to my future self: do bow ties before buttons) so I don’t love these quite as much as I could but still, cute.

The designs were inspired by Ana’s ManisAna’s Manis and ka_yee_or. I wanted to do all the gingerbread things, and so I went with it! Honestly, the houses came out MUCH better than I expected.

Strangely enough, although matting down the nails didn’t actually change the color (and I did love the look afterward) it changed how my camera interpreted the color…so the matte photos needed quite a bit of color correction to make the nails look brown and not grey. They are still a little off, sorry!

In my mad dash to finish my pediatrics rotation and thus not search through my spam folder in my mailbox, I ended up missing the invite to this years Nail Polish Canada challenge! However, I found it (like, 30 minutes ago) and have really quickly edited up a single photo for submission.

So, because hopefully you like me, and because I like free polish, please head over hereand vote for my blog so I can win free polish! If I win I will likely end up doing my own giveaway as well 😀

THANK YOU and happy Friday! The actual post of how this mani was done will go up sometime next week.

Now this art, I am proud of. I have tried to do Christmas tree ornaments before, and they always failed rather badly. These however, totally worked.

The design (especially the branches!) was inspired by @phenomenail. The base was a mess of nude and slightly shimmer colors because I really don’t own a pale-pinkish-yellow base. I should probably get one! I do like how the base nude color ended up looking though!

The branches were a pain to paint, but completely worth it. I actually wore this when looking for a wedding photographer and the woman we ended up with loved it! Is it sad that one of my criteria for choosing people is “do they notice my nails”? I feel like it is, but if they are unobservant I likely don’t want to work with them I suppose.

Here starts Christmas week! Well, almost week. I have three intentional manis, one somewhat unintentional mani, and yesterday which had nothing to do with Christmas but was still awesome. So, we get some chevrons and Christmas trees today!

The art was inspired by this pin although I have no idea who the artist is! I went looking and couldn’t find a name, so thank you, unidentified artist, for your art :-p. This is why you should always watermark your pictures!

I made the chevrons using tape, although the declinations between the red metallic and the silver were free-handed. Still works! And took a lot less time. The tree was also freehanded, and came out a lot better on my thumb (which I predictably did second).

Candy canes! And snowflakes! I am posting a Christmas(ish) mani this early because it is my entry in Nail Polish Canada’s holiday nail art challenge! So, please click this link and head over to check out all the nail art! Also, please vote for me 😀

I actually searched google to find my favorite way of doing candy canes for nail art…how wide to space the lines? Thin or thick or both? What order of thin and thick lines? I ended up enjoying alternating the lines like this.

I also end up free handing at least one snowflake every year, and then swearing them off until the next year. My thumb snowflakes took 30 minutes by themselves. 😦

This might be the cutest mani I have done on someone else. Ever. Bri wins the award for best cute faces! Everything here was something she found online (pinterest is awesome) and showed me so I could duplicate it. I think adding the headphones to the penguin was my only real contribution!

So, say hello to a snowman, Rudolph, a polar bear, the cutest penguin ever, and the fox!

I think I need to make my own cuddly penguin next winter. Ugh. Melt!

The second mani was made by my friend Trish on her own nails, but using my polish! Trish has skills 🙂

Random mixture today! Up first we have some pretty teal and silver holo chevrons with dots. These were done for my friend Jaime as she was preparing to leave lab. Before she joined, almost no one noticed my nails! I’m sad she left, but it was fun to paint her nails! It helps that she likes teal 😀

Second today, we have some hold-overs from the winter holidays. My friend Bri asked for wintery trees. The best part of this was that the whole thing was done on a textured background! It made the snow look ever MORE awesome (in my option) and the trees look properly 3-dimensional.

I really like doing snow-covered trees! The trees themselves are two shades of green plus the white. The hardest part of this mani was adding the golden glow to the tree with red ornaments…that went oblast and it was darn difficult to paint around the tree!

There are more wintery manis coming up, there was a whole holiday section I never posted!

This was a quick mani I did just to see how well my new pinkish red matte contrasted with a beautiful deep holiday pink I got last year! Given that I free-handed all the lines in this, I’m actually pretty happy with it. It honestly would have taken less time if I just used tape…but I was in a house in the Pocono Mountains with a bunch of friends and a bunch of food and NO TAPE. So this is what we get!

This was just fast and easy. Two coats of Cute Little Vixen by OPI (why don’t I use this polish more often? It’s so pretty!), and then tried to make rectangles using Beautiful by Mentality.

Beautiful is a pretty reddish pink matte polish that has a satin-like finish. I just used it again today (whee!) so I can say for sure that it covers in two thin coats and dries quickly. I was hoping for a true red matte (which this is not) but it is a pretty mature-yet-girlish color all the same! You can find Beautiful at the Mentality website for $6.75 with free US shipping!

I finished the mani off with some free-handed stars. Sorta. Maybe bows like the top of a gift? Anyway, the gold is Penny Talk by Essie. I need to get my hands on another real gold soon (Penny Talk is more of a copper gold).

Finally, my Christmas manicure! It isn’t great, but I like it. Mostly because one of my other new Emily de Molly polishes, Monet’s Garden, is absolutely stunning and a wonderfully perfect teal-green!

The design is simple, a duplication of those messy wavy trees that seem to be all over pinterest. Mine are not the best, but I’ll take it anyway! Also, I’ve never tried drawing stars with my non-dominant hand before. That was…exciting. Right. Also difficult.

Monet’s Garden is an absolutely stunning teal/green polish (green with a touch more blue than traditional green). I didn’t have to dig for glitter at all! Shown here is three coats of polish. I found medium large teal and light green hex glitters, along with smaller green and teal hexes, and a really fun smattering of pink/red and purple smaller glitters. The color contrast was fantastic! The polish did need two coats of top coat to be smooth, but didn’t go on thick or gloopy. I was on the fence about buying this one, but I’m so glad I did!